Step back, step forward, more nativity scenes - 15, 21, 22, 23

Although I concentrated quite a few of the Christmas related scenes in the first week, I didn't want to bunch the rest of them up too much and I also wanted to kind of keep coming back to the nativity each Sunday. The problem was that some of the scenes were really part of the final nativity scene or technically just after it, when the calendar is over with.  I'd already made my calendar 25-29 days because it is based on the 4 Sundays of Advent, not the calendar month of dates.

I did think of extending the calendar even further to include these scenes but I was struggling enough with 29! I decided there would be some foreshadowing and some would be towards the end.

I decided there had to be a Christmas link to all 4 Sundays. Hence Mary and her Angel for scene 1, John's call for Jesus' coming at 8, and then further scenes at 15 and 22.

The easy one to move a little earlier was number 15 - the wise men (and women?).

Obviously they would have been studying the "star" before they started travelling so they could be moved further up the sequence, and depicted in that part of their story. I made sure that their scene would look directly at the star, which was also going to be in the picture as a later stage. Hence the telescope does not look up into the sky.

More map fabric here - I mean it's amazing stuff, and they are planning a journey so why not?

I decided I would try and make one of the figures a woman because why not?  Also stolen from a friend who made me a nativity set from clay with a female wise person.
I also deliberately decided that they would be darker looking people, as tradition says they visited Jesus from Africa, and were definitely from West of Israel.

Just before the final sequence I placed a scene for "no room at the inn" (21).

Here too as I mentioned I decided the innkeeper could be a woman.

I also made use of a map fabric scrap again, to emphasise the inn as a place for travelers and the end of the journey. I like that a negative scene also was not highlighted in a Sunday, which was less deliberate than it was pushed aside for a more interesting scene after.




For  scene 22 I decided I would just have to have the shepherds being sung to early as there was no way to make them have an earlier scene. The angels don't say "Jesus will  be born soon", they say he is born. But I decided 22 was near enough.

Similarly with 23, I decided it's not really a surprise what the gifts of the wise men were, so I just put them as near to the end as possible. They are shown as what they are or represent - gold for kingship, (frank)incense for divinity, myrrh (for his sacrificial death).

A random collection... 9, 11, 12

I was trying to be very strictly numeric with these posts about the Advent calendar, but it's just not working for me so I'm going to group a bit as it suits me, roughly in order.

Having started with a week of at least loosely nativity related stories for 1-8, and seeded some key elements of the nativity later in the sequence, I then I had to work out what to fill in between. I thought about trying to make some themes - prophets, beginnings but I didn't really find that very inspiring. I definitely wanted the other stories to be visual so that it would be easier to design, and ideally where possible to be familiar stories. Unfortunately as well, sometimes what you can draw is not what you can sew and as well when I chose to change one element others also changed or got moved. There was an overall design to consider as well as individual ones which also altered things as I went along.

Scene number 9 for example, in one set of notes seems to have been planned as Adam and Eve. But by the time I did my full drawing had turned into the wolf lies down with the lamb (Isaiah 11:6) - the reference about the peaceable kingdom, Adam and Eve having been moved elsewhere in the design and sequence.

I just couldn't make this work as anything at all design wise, and very late on I eventually I just chose a story I kind of liked and would be to create - the Pearl with out Price parable in Matthew 13:45-46. You can of course make links to the Christmas story, baby Jesus as hidden jewel in a cave. And the parable itself is about the pricelessness of God and his wisdom but I did mainly choose it because I liked it and I liked my design.

Once I chose this one, I wanted a fake pearl to put on. I was very touched to find that my Dad insisted on bringing me a large pearl bead from a collection he has from some old project.

With scene 11 I have an early notes that just says "tree", and then it became Jonah and the Whale, because it's fun and who doesn't like drawing whales? It also moved position from higher up, to lower down the design.

It was one of the easiest to do, alongside the pearl without price.

Scene 12, I have an early note saying Moses in a basket, which later moved elsewhere, and then Daniel in the lion's den, which I also just didn't like drawing, the lions looked like pet cats. So I looked around for a replacement and eyed up another of my designs, which I realised that I had drawn it far too small to execute - Noah's ark. So I made it a larger design to fill this spot. The design was much enhanced by a beautiful blue map fabric I had in my stash.

The journey begins - Interactive elements - scene 7 & 14

Early in the planning I've mentioned I wanted to have as many places where the reveal would be parts of the actual nativity story. There aren't enough individual scenes to depict and at one stage I decided that perhaps I could have Joseph and pregnant Mary stopping several times along the way. I can't remember how many stops there were originally but in the end I only did two. This also gave a sort of structure to the design with a winding road going across the whole thing.

So scene 7 is a backdrop of the start of the journey to Bethlehem from Nazareth. I made use of some map fabric I had been given to add to the emphasis on journey and added some simple houses.
For the second rest stop I wanted it to link to the scene that would be next to it, where there would be a feature of a palm tree. It was meant to feel like a small oasis of green on a dusty road. In the photo below, the lady in red is from the scene 13 which we will come to later

The interactive element came from the figure of pregnant Mary on a donkey with Joseph.
This image also reflected back to a Hispanic (possibly just Mexican) advent tradition I really like: to have a statue of the pregnant Mary and Joseph is called "La Posada" - meaning the inn (ie the journey to the inn) in the house in the run up to Christmas.
Alongside that (google tells me) there is tradition of re-enactment when two people dress as Joseph and Mary visiting various houses over 9 nights(1 for each month of pregnancy), singing songs until they are allowed in. This represents the way Mary and Joseph were forbidden room at the inn.

As I needed them to face two different ways they needed to be double sided.
Each side is not quite the same.
On one side, we see Mary's leg and foot and Joseph with a stick. And Mary holds the donkey's ear.

On the other side, we see Joseph carrying a bag and Mary sitting side saddle, with just her bottom visible. Her hand on her stomach. Inside the figures is two layers of cardboard to make them stronger and hold their shape better.

But for both, I wanted Mary's hair to be covered. I felt this would be both practical and likely on a journey encountering others.
I then had to decide if I would cover the scene in a leaf, technically Joseph and Mary should be placed on the scene and then moved to the next spot. But I thought for consistency and ease, they should be in place at the start and then move, and so I made a leaf to cover them

There weren't a lot of interactive elements in the whole project but I built on this later with the nativity scene. More on that later.

4, 5, 6 pick up... a suitcase?

I had originally imagined I would find lots of parts of the story to fill every single stage, but this was very rapidly obvious I wouldn't be able to do. I also realised I would lose patience if I did larger scenes for every stage. I decided interspersed among larger scenes I would have littler ones that were simpler or just easier in some way.

The first 7 scenes were all about the start of the journey. 1-3 about finding out about the pregnancy, but then 4-6 about preparing for or anticipating the journey to Bethlehem (Luke 1-5)


Thus 4 is the Census that kickstarts the journey.
Then you have 5 and 6 and I thought about what you take on a journey, specially from a child's perspective - which is a suitcase and keys.
Obviously neither would necessarily be a real thing for Mary and Joseph at the time but they would be comprehensible to a child.
Keys also have added symbolism for Christians with the image of the keys to the Kingdom of God (Matthew 16:18-19) being offered to Peter and a symbol of the Pope in the Catholic church.

Alongside deciding to have some smaller scenes to sew I decided since they were different in shape and scale I would have a different style of leaf. Also although I had a fair amount of the leafy green material I used for the larger scenes I didn't want to run out, and I did have a variety of other leafy decorated material scraps. Some of these leaf or faintly plant-y or green scraps were too small for the larger scenes and satisfying to use up as well.

In the beginning (scenes 1 and 2)

So you may be wondering - why so long between posts...welll actually there was a gap but not quite as long a gap as it looks. According to the tags in the photos I took, my earliest full sketch of the whole thing was in August 2017 and I was probably thinking about it even earlier than that, so from April 2016 to July/August 2017 is not such a huge gap really. That it took me from then until now to finish...well that's another story.

I did also do a mini project in August - a thank you to my Japanese hosts but because it's based on their name I don't want to post it up here.

One of the early design and layout ideas I had from the very start was that the first two pictures would be two elements of the story of Jesus' conception and parents relating to angels. Both Mary and Joseph are visited by angels. The nativity story is only told in the gospels of Luke and Matthew, and each of them only relay one of these stories. Luke has the annunciation when Mary is informed of her pregnancy (Luke 1: 26-38). Matthew has the dream of Joseph when Joseph is told not to put Mary aside for being pregnant (Matthew 1:18-24).
I wanted these two images to book end the top row of the design. This is one of the elements that never changed from start to finish of the layout and design.

I wanted the figures of Mary and Joseph to face each other and the designs to be mirrors of each other. The only real difference is that Mary's eyes are closed in prayer, and Joseph's are open and looking at Mary. The clothing colours are deliberately both shades of blue, and are repeated throughout the whole project for those characters

. 

As a result when it came to the angel's wings. I made a pattern that I used for all 4 of them. I actually cut the pattern out 4 times but I only really needed one!

I also was in such a hurry to start that I think for one of the two I forgot a really easy basic construction detail of most of my picture designs - a base layer of interfacing. I slightly regretted this as the background material velvet was a bit stretchy!

Another thing I decided to learn from previous projects was - don't leave all the boring stuff till the end. Almost every scene has a "door" made in a leaf shape. I did them as I went along rather than being bored at the end. 

When fashioning these first leaves I very quickly decided it was OK if some of the design was visible around the edges of the leaf - a sort of way to guess and remember what came next. After all, it would only be a surprise once. I was very lucky, I had this great green fabric for the leaves from a friend and the amount was just enough for all the leaves I wanted in that colour and fabric. Well, nearly, but I'll come to that later.

Numbers were added much, much later so I could be sure of the entire sequence, although as previously mentioned, Mary and Joseph never moved from positions 1 and 2.